Press Release

Coburn and Issa to USPS: Use Your Authority to Proceed with Modified Six-Day Delivery Plans

WASHINGTON – Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., R-Okla., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote a joint letter today to the United States Postal Service Board of Governors advising them to resist political lobbying and utilize their legal authority to move forward with the modified six-day delivery plan announced on February 6, 2013.

“[T]he Board of Governors has a fiduciary responsibility to utilize its legal authority to implement modified 6-day mail delivery as recently proposed,” the letter continues. “The deficits incurred by the Postal Service and the low level of liquidity under which it is operating leaves it in a perilous position; one that demands implementation of all corrective actions possible.”

The lawmakers note that the Obama Administration did not include the removal of the existing provision requiring six-day delivery in its communications to Congress as a necessary step for the implementation of the modified delivery plan.

“As members tasked with the responsibility of postal authorization, we continue to support the position the Postal Service has articulated that preservation of this appropriations rider does not prevent the planned implementation of a modified 6-day mail delivery schedule,” Issa and Coburn, chair and ranking remember of the House and Senate committees with legislative authority over USPS, write.

Coburn and Issa note that the Postal Service has the legal authority to pursue its modified six-day delivery plan in part because “[a]s proposed, the Postal Service is not eliminating a day of service, but is merely altering what products are delivered on what day, to maintain a sustainable level of service.”

“Without major, immediate restructuring actions, annual operating deficits will increase, and the Postal Service will sink much deeper into default on payments owed to taxpayers,” the letter notes.